When I was a little kid, I thought it was "magic" how my grandpa could make a penny come out of my ear. Once I grew up, I recognized that the penny hadn't really come out of my ear. My perceptions--as well as a bit of sleight of hand and encouragement on the part of dear ol' Grandpa Curt---led me to believe that the penny had come out of my ear. There was a perfectly sensible, rational, NATURAL explanation.
Once I recognized the flawed reasoning in Jehovah's Witnesses, I thought that, since they were wrong, someone else MUST be right. I examined all sorts of religious traditions, and found that all of them contained the same flaw: The assumption that because we don't understand something right now, it must mean that God did it. That's a basic flaw in reasoning from my perspective.
I've been sober in AA for 24 years, and for a long time, I used the traditional Christian-flavored approach to a higher power. However, it eventually became apparent that the changes in my personality and behavior that were being attributed to the "grace of God" could also be explained by cessation of drinking, altered actions, changed attitudes and the presence of a group that supported those changes. While I still attend meetings, I now describe myself as a permanent member of "We Agnostics." Coincidence isn't proof of God. The willingness to change one's own behavior isn't proof of God. I just don't buy it; while I doubt that I could have recovered from alcoholism without the support of the group, I don't think God had anything to do with it. There's nothing particularly "holy" about abstaining from alcohol, taking responsibility for your own actions, and trying to live in peace with other people. It doesn't need God to explain it.
Now there are plenty of good things to be found in all religions--even Jehovah's Witnesses!--a sense of belonging and of community being foremost among them. But on whole, the bad outweighs the good, because religion fosters an "us-against-them" mentality (and that's true of most religious and political affiliations).
I recognize and respect the power of stories to transmit emotional truths (the sacrifice and rebirth/resurrection stories are particularly powerful, because they touch on a level of unselfishness that most of us don't have and many of us wish for), but emotional truths are not the same as facts. I don't think that one religious text is more worthy than another because someone's experience of it was powerful, whether the text in question the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Quran or Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures. They're all just books; like any book, they're interesting and possibly helpful. That's all.
Atheism is not a belief for me; it's a state that I've come to recognize over the years as being most descriptive of my views. I simply haven't come across a concept of God/god/gods that holds up to scrutiny, which makes me an atheist (non-theist is also accurate). I'm no different than any believer; I've just rejected one more god than the Muslim and Jew and three-in-one more gods than the Christian has rejected.
I simply don't understand how anyone could think that a wandering group of Bronze Age shepherds living in tents in the desert could possibly have a better grip on biology, cosmology, psychology, etc. ad nauseum than our current understanding. Nope, doesn't make sense.
I do better with contemporary believers who take the Holy Writ to be metaphorical. It's not a metaphor that works for me, but hey, if it's working for you, more power to you.
And lately I've begun to practice what I think of as secular Buddhism---Buddhism without a higher being. There are sound reasons why meditation and breathing exercises help us physically, mentally and emotionally, and I find no reason at all to clutter it up with any notion of God/god/gods. I do keep a little statue of the Laughing Buddha on my desk, to remind me that life is short and to be enjoyed, but I'm not under any delusion that it's a god or idol. It's just a reminder to take myself less seriously and to take responsibility for caring for the helpless (the Laughing Buddha, "Fat Buddha," Budai/Hotei, is traditionally noted for kindness to children, charity, poverty and contentment).
I will defend to the death your right to believe--and to practice that belief--but I do not want religion subsidized or given preferential treatment by the government. Your right to practice your religion ends where my life begins, so when I say "No, thanks," to your proseltyzing, please respect it.